2014 F1 cars

Williams have become the second team to reveal the look of their 2014 F1 car – and the first to show off the design of the widely-debated 2014 noses.

The FW36 features the strikingly narrow, tapered nose which is expected to feature on many of this year’s cars due to the framing of the new regulations.

It is the first Williams to be powered by a Mercedes engine, and chief technical officer Pat Symonds said he was pleased with their collaboration so far.

“This is the first time that Williams has worked with Mercedes in F1 and we’ve been very impressed,” he said. “Their professionalism and commitment have been notable and we’re as confident as we can be that the power unit will be competitive.”

Aside from the striking nose design, which is expected to feature on most cars this year, the car features enlarged air intakes to cool the sophisticated new engines and energy recovery systems.

“Overall the cars will need more cooling this year,” Symonds explained. “The demands on water and oil cooling may be slightly diminished, but the [Energy Recovery System] is significantly more powerful and hence needs more cooling. We also have to cool the charge air from the turbocharger compressor which requires a substantial intercooler.”

“There’s a lot more technology on the cars this year,” he added. “We’ve had turbo-charged engines in F1 before; what’s different this time is that it is much more than just an engine change, it is a completely different system.”

“We’ve gone from a slightly hybridised normally aspirated engine to a fully integrated hybrid power unit with novel technology at its heart.”

Symonds said production of the car went according to plan. “But it’s been a challenge to get the car down to the weight limit.”

“It’s been achievable, but it hasn’t been easy because the new power unit is heavier than the outgoing V8.”

What’s with the turbo engines? I (IMHO) totally dislike the high pitched noise of the 2000’s(except the v10’s). Early v12 of the 90’s sounded great and v8’s too. BUT the last v8’s where awful.
I know that the sound of the 80’s turbo will never come back but these engines sound really nice to my ears, with some low end growl and the turbine whistle.

I agree. It would be quite a minor problem if it wasn’t in such a prominent place. It doesn’t have the awkward-looking second intake on top of the air-box (like the FI and all recent Ferraris). I’d hoped that the front wing would look a little narrower though. It makes it a bit more proportionate to the rear wing, but not as much as I expected.

That’s one hell of a change in opinion! But yeah I agree it looks fine, people will go mad over the noses for a while then get over it quickly enough. What I’m liking is the narrowed front wing, it looks a lot more sensible than when they stretched past the front tyres.

If they make the “anteater” part of the nose the same colour as the front wing (i.e. black in this instance) wouldn’t that help? You could then cosmetically round-off the nose in the car’s main colour.

@timpey Actually the car looks good …apart from the er… ( I can’t call it a nose ) . I think RBR’s secret this year will be the flexible …er…. whatever ( good luck imagining that ) . Seb could call his car Free willy . LOL. I don’t know what merc have in store .

I don’t think it is that bad. It could be alot worse. I’ve seen plenty of possible outcomes throughtout the past months and I really like this one compared to others. I still think it is ugly but there were worse alternatives.

And in the end, if this car/year brings us some good racing I can’t be bothered with the ****-noses.

I would think that nose is something you might enjoy looking at, well hung and all @girts :-P

Honestly, I do not think it looks as horrible as feared, at least they tapered the change in width a bit to make it a smooth transition. And it looks as if FI have done the same, making these noses look “interesting” – a bit like the “broken and badly mended” one on the Lotus in the last 2 years – rather than the horrible boxy LEGO nose on cars like the FI, Ferrari, Williams (2012) and Caterhams.

I rank it in the same category as the unformly things Newey came up with for the last Red Bulls, taking diverse looks as a pre and a point of interest to look at what changes there during the season.

@bascb – If they’re all only as bad as the Williams, it’s not quite as bad as I first feared. I got used to the snowplow front wings, the tiny rear wings and eventually, the stepped noses, so I’m sure I can get used to the ****noses as well.

I’m reserving my judgement on whether it’s as horrible as I feared though until I’ve seen more though as there’s a good chance some of the teams near the top will create something turely horrible!

@bascb I don’t think they tapered the transition just to make it look better, as with everything in F1 there must be a logical reason behind that, my guess is that it makes the nose stronger in a front impact.
Force India said yesterday they will come up with a more aggressive nose design later on because they didn’t want to fail the crash tests, I imagine it will be a deeper cut “finger” within the nose.

I wonder if Red Bull’s “nose” will be flexible? They could paint it pink and get Durex to sponsor it! It would be a hell of an incentive for the drivers to prevent the car behind them from closing the gap…

The target was to have the tip of the nose low, so that in case of a crash with another car the nose gets buried under a chassis (ahm lets not think about that cxxk-pit) rather than going over the top and hitting the driver or getting airborne @sd

In recent years teams have learnt how much better it is to get as much airflow under the nose as possible, so now they try to still keep as much of it high up, and let only the minimum allowed in the rules (the narrow section bending down) to block airflow in that area @sd.

Call me pessimist but couldn’t this low nose course almost the same type of accident as the high nose. With the high nose that car rode over the struck car but this low nose, if it goes in just behind the front wheels, could cause the struck car to ride up over the striking car, end result the same.

@joetoml1n You do realize that the rules could have been made in such a way that it didn’t include these noses, it was the FIA that restricted the teams to such designs in the first place and I will keep them responsible for this.